flowerweaver
Deeply Rooted
As if having something with stingers colonizing in my shed weren't enough, I now have an even more frightening prospect.
Back in June a tornado felled our back yard Italian Stone pine--which had been the champion tree in Texas--across my greenhouse. It made a huge hole in the ground and when the tree company came to cut and remove it, the root ball fell back into the hole, leaving some gnarled roots and airspace beneath. Our dogs were quite intrigued so we had to fence them out of it.
Sullivan keeps digging his way under the fence around the stump and has made a sizable Wiener dog den beneath it, to which he now retreats if I don't put him in his crate at the first hint of sunset. I've attempted to block his tunnels with large pieces of firewood, but in his determination he musters the strength to remove it.
Yesterday late afternoon I heard intense growling behind the house and thought perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan were in a tiff. Then I heard a piercing shriek from one of them, and ran to see who was injured. I was not prepared for what I saw.
Wedged between the house and some trees, there were all three dogs surrounding the largest black snake I've seen yet. Sullivan was trying to pull it by it's middle. It's head was flattened like a cobra and face to face with Gilbert, who was backed against the wall with his hackles up. It was rattling it's rattle-less tail.
I knew it wasn't a rattlesnake, but I wasn't sure it was an endangered Blue Indigo, either, which we often encounter in our chicken coop. (It is the largest non-venomous snake in the US and eats rattlesnakes). It was more of a charcoal or dusty black rather than a shiny blue-black. I am now thinking it was a Black Hognose snake, or Spreading Adder. They are venomous, but rear fanged and tend to posture to scare away its predators. Although many snakes will rattle and flatten when surrounded (I completed the fourth side) I'd never seen a Blue Indigo--or any snake here--in this kind of fighting form. It was awesomely frightening to say the least.
Quickly I scooped them both up, one under each arm and carried them to their crates in the greenhouse with Cody in the lead. There I checked them over for puncture wounds but did not find any. The snake had imparted some very nasty musk-stink on them both, though, and it transferred to me!
Of course, the snake headed right for the den under the pine stump! Arrgh! Now I really don't know what to do. I'm hoping it slithered off in the night to find another home. We have plenty of wild space, so I don't know why it has chosen my backyard!
Back in June a tornado felled our back yard Italian Stone pine--which had been the champion tree in Texas--across my greenhouse. It made a huge hole in the ground and when the tree company came to cut and remove it, the root ball fell back into the hole, leaving some gnarled roots and airspace beneath. Our dogs were quite intrigued so we had to fence them out of it.
Sullivan keeps digging his way under the fence around the stump and has made a sizable Wiener dog den beneath it, to which he now retreats if I don't put him in his crate at the first hint of sunset. I've attempted to block his tunnels with large pieces of firewood, but in his determination he musters the strength to remove it.
Yesterday late afternoon I heard intense growling behind the house and thought perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan were in a tiff. Then I heard a piercing shriek from one of them, and ran to see who was injured. I was not prepared for what I saw.
Wedged between the house and some trees, there were all three dogs surrounding the largest black snake I've seen yet. Sullivan was trying to pull it by it's middle. It's head was flattened like a cobra and face to face with Gilbert, who was backed against the wall with his hackles up. It was rattling it's rattle-less tail.
I knew it wasn't a rattlesnake, but I wasn't sure it was an endangered Blue Indigo, either, which we often encounter in our chicken coop. (It is the largest non-venomous snake in the US and eats rattlesnakes). It was more of a charcoal or dusty black rather than a shiny blue-black. I am now thinking it was a Black Hognose snake, or Spreading Adder. They are venomous, but rear fanged and tend to posture to scare away its predators. Although many snakes will rattle and flatten when surrounded (I completed the fourth side) I'd never seen a Blue Indigo--or any snake here--in this kind of fighting form. It was awesomely frightening to say the least.
Quickly I scooped them both up, one under each arm and carried them to their crates in the greenhouse with Cody in the lead. There I checked them over for puncture wounds but did not find any. The snake had imparted some very nasty musk-stink on them both, though, and it transferred to me!
Of course, the snake headed right for the den under the pine stump! Arrgh! Now I really don't know what to do. I'm hoping it slithered off in the night to find another home. We have plenty of wild space, so I don't know why it has chosen my backyard!